Such a desynchronizer is already known in the art, e.g. from the article "Application of the multipath self-routing switch in a combined STM/ATM cross-connect system", by B. Pauwels et al., International Switching Symposium, October 1992, Yokohama, Vol. 1, pp. 324-328. Therein, the desynchronization is briefly discussed in section 3 under the heading "Contention in the switch".
As described in detail in the mentioned article, it is important for future telecommunications systems that the powerful tools developed for future packet switching networks, e.g. switching fabrics for Asynchronous Transfer Mode or ATM networks, can be also used in conjunction with other transfer modes in order to maximally use the potential of these newly developed tools. An example hereof is the use of an asynchronous switching fabric as a Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) or Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) cross-connect, in which way, a high synergy between ATM and SDH or SONET networks is achieved.
However, these asynchronous switching fabrics are optimized to cope with asynchronous traffic such as would be present in an ATM network. A basic property of asynchronous traffic is that its information rate is statistically distributed thus making it highly unlikely that an overload condition, for instance due to a number of information units simultaneously contending for a same output port of the fabric, will reoccur. However, in switching synchronous traffic through such a fabric, this overload condition, if it occurs once, will systematically reoccur with e.g. the frame rate of the synchronous traffic.
It is therefore clear that a desynchronizer is needed to break the strict synchronism of such information streams so that worst case effects are prevented from reoccurring periodically.
In the known desynchronizer this is achieved by breaking the strict order in which the information units are received and hence by deriving an output information stream in which the order of the information units is randomized. In the referenced paper these information units are parts of an SDH-frame or SONET frame which are logically linked together, i.e. which belong to a same structure within this frame, and each of which has to be transferred to a specific output port of the switching fabric.
Although the desynchronizer is not discussed in detail in the mentioned article, it is nevertheless clear that its inclusion in the telecommunications network represents an increase in network complexity and in the delay incurred by information units during their transfer.